ADMINISTRATIVE REPORT

Date: February 20, 2002
Author/Local: PUnderwood/7980

RTS NO. 02551

CC File No. 1151

Council: July 30, 2002

TO:	Vancouver City Council
FROM:	Director of Information Technology
SUBJECT:	The Property Information Management System Project

RECOMMENDATIONS

A: THAT Council approve proceeding with the Property Information Management System Project at a cost of $628,600; source of funding to be the Information Technology Long Term Financing Plan.

B: THAT Council approve the creation of 4.0 temporary full-time positions for up to two years in Information Technology Department for the implementation of the Property Information Management System Project, including 2.0fte technical positions, 1.0fte systems analyst position, and 1.0fte project manager position, subject to classification by the General Manager of Human Resources.

GENERAL MANAGER'S COMMENTS

The General Manager of Corporate Services RECOMMENDS approval of the foregoing.

PURPOSE

This report accompanies the MAP Project report and seeks approval to proceed with the development and implementation of the Property Management Information System at a cost $628,600 over two years.

BACKGROUND

Property and property-related information (such as addresses, assessments, legal descriptions, and related information) is at the heart of many of the City's most important business processes and its importance continues to grow. This information is at the heart of 80% to 90% of the City's data.

Management of property information is currently fragmented and requires extensive manual effort to track, extract and reconcile. While there are many related computer applications that manage specific components of this information . . .

· PRISM for permits;
· Property Tax for property assessments, ownership and tax information;
· Utility Billing for water, sewer and solid waste billing;
· License+ for business and dog licensing;
· DOMINO for Community Services documents; and,
· VanMap and GIS for the graphic component;

. . . there is no comprehensive strategy for managing and integrating this information.

Since the early 1990's, the City has been working toward improving the management of property information:

· In 1991, the City produced an information systems plan (ISP) which identified the importance of property-related and geographical information.
· In July 1997, Council approved funding for GIS infrastructure to provide an environment for a central addressing and property information application.
· In July 1998, Council approved funding for the MAP Project which was to provide an enterprise property information application. The property information application was to be implemented in 2001, however as noted in the companion Council report, a decision was made to continue to pursue the objectives of the MAP Project, but without the use of the MAP software.

The Property Information Management System project has evolved from the MAP Project, and holds the same primary principle which is to make property information data available to staff of the City of Vancouver. The main objectives of the Property Information Management System Project are to ensure that all data has one clear owner, is stored once, and is accessible to all other property-related information systems, regardless of their platforms and databases. To do this, the Property Information Management System Project will develop technical links between databases so that users can seamlessly access authoritative property data from a variety of applications.

DISCUSSION

The Property Information Management System Project will be managed using the City's program life-cycle methodology along with standard project management techniques including a requirement that participants sign off on objectives. This is particularly important given the cross-departmental aspect of this project.

The project will have two phases with the first phase formally commencing immediately following funding approval and the second phase commencing approximately one year after the first phase starts. The scope of the project is being controlled by the available funding. The major deliverables are:

Phase 1: linkage of applications that contain authoritative address data (such as PRISM), ownership and assessment information (from British Columbia Assessment and maintained in the Tax system), and legal information (from Land Titles Branch currently being brought into the City's GIS)

Phase 2: linkage of all other applications that contain property information.

Specific project objectives include:

·Providing easy extraction of property information using keys and reports

·Enabling all City staff to have access to authoritative property information
·Validating of all property information between systems
·Providing interfaces to and from the different technical environments
·Providing owners of the data with reports to assist them in maintaining and improving the accuracy of their data including the development of Service Level Agreements
·Reducing the duplication of property data
·Maintaining links to the graphic representation of the data in GIS
·Standardizing definitions of property information data fields
·Ensuring data can be shared across both new and existing systems.

FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS

The budget for this Project is as follows:

Category	Phase 1	Phase 2	Total
Staff	$215,600	$295,300	$510,900
Operational and training	48,000	57,100	105,100
Hardware and software	12,600	0	12,600
Total	$276,200	$352,394	$628,600

Funding for this project is available in the Information Technology Long Term Financing Plan and represents the funding remaining in from the original GIS project approved by Council in 1998.

PERSONNEL IMPLICATIONS

The project budget described above includes the creation of four temporary positions in the Information Technology Department, as follows:

· Project Manager for two years
· Systems Analyst for two years
· Programmer III for eighteen months
· Database and Data Administrator for eighteen months.

These positions will be classified by the General Manager of Human Resources and filled in accordance with City procedures and collective agreements.

CONCLUSIONS

Property information is an important component of the City's business processes and the data needs to be accessible to all staff that use that information. This report proposes a technical approach to allow staff to access that information.

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(c) 1998 City of Vancouver